


Patience on a Monument

by betts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bullying, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Overdosing, Roommates, Semi-Public Sex, Tinder, a little bit of brienne/tormund but not enough to relationship tag, a little bit of jaime/sansa too, sorry for mangling your characters to fit my perception of them GRRM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Having a Jaime in your life means living in a soap opera, except you can’t DVR it to watch later, and the main character sometimes ends up in your guest bedroom for an undisclosed period of time because he has a woefully codependent relationship with his sister.





	Patience on a Monument

**Author's Note:**

> I need to be working on my thesis but I wrote this self-indulgent nonsense instead. A list of my egregious fandom trespasses in the end note.

_She never told her love,_  
_But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,_  
_Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,_  
_And with a green and yellow melancholy_  
_She sat like patience on a monument,_  
_Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?_  
_We men may say more, swear more: but indeed_  
_Our shows are more than will; for still we prove_  
_Much in our vows, but little in our love._

 _—_ William Shakespeare,  _Twelfth Night_

* * *

Brienne is halfway through her favorite comfort film _Some Like It Hot_ when she hears her front door squeak open, followed by a _thunk_ , a pause, another _thunk_ , and it closes again. Rain spatters on the hot pavement outside, and she picks up the remote to turn the volume up. The door opens again, and she calls out, “Do you need any help?”

“No, Your Grace, by all means, continue watching your movie,” Jaime says. _Thunk_. The door closes. Brienne curls tighter into her Saturday night blanket burrito. She lets out a long breath and unfurls herself, drags her feet to the growing pile of whatever odds and ends Jaime deemed important enough to bring with him, and picks up two duffel bags. She carries them upstairs and tosses them in the guest bedroom, which has a nice purple floral duvet and matching drapes and empty dresser drawers—a space for when _guests_ come to stay with her, not oblivious buffoons like Jaime—and she goes back downstairs, where the pile has gotten larger.

Jaime is waiting outside with a giant, flat box over his shoulders. Brienne opens the door and asks, “Is that a fucking television?”

“Duh.”

She moves to the side so he can maneuver in, but the TV won’t fit in sideways so he has to slide it off of his arms and push it through the door.

“Why do you need a television? Did you seriously buy an entire television just to stay with me for a few days?”

“About that,” Jaime says. Brienne at least has the satisfaction of seeing he’s broken a sweat and has to lean on the TV box to catch his breath. It’s bigger than the one in her living room. “Might be a bit longer than a few days.”

She tracks a bead of sweat rolling down his neck and onto the collar of his t-shirt. His t-shirt that is roughly two sizes too small for him, so you can see every muscle in his entire torso and his utter lack of body fat, and really, she can’t wait for him to hit middle age so his metabolism will slow down and all of his beer drinking and steak-and-potato bingeing will finally catch up with him, as God intended.

“What the hell happened?” she asks.

Cersei has kicked Jaime out before, of course, but only ever for a couple days, _a weekend retreat_ , Jaime calls it, _quality time with my wench._ This time, all she got was a text around four in the afternoon that said, _I’m gonna come stay with you awhile._ She replied, _k_.

Jaime is the kind of best friend you tell your therapist about. And once you’re done telling her about him, she’d go, “Well that seems unhealthy.” And then, after a few sessions, you realize you only need a therapist because you have a Jaime, and if you didn’t have a Jaime, not only would you not know what to talk to your therapist about, you also wouldn’t have any anecdotes to tell your other friends over drinks (This one time, Jaime…), or stories to tell your father when he calls you on Sunday evenings (Jaime did the stupidest thing this week…), or anything interesting at all. Having a Jaime in your life means living in a soap opera, except you can’t DVR it to watch later, and the main character sometimes ends up in your guest bedroom for an undisclosed period of time because he has a woefully codependent relationship with his sister.

“Nothing,” Jaime says. “Shut up. I don’t know. It’s whatever. How are you? What’ve you been up to?” He looks at the television in the living room, where Tony Curtis is seducing Marilyn Monroe in a yacht. “ _S_ _ome Like It Hot_? Again?”

She shrugs. “I like it.”

“Okay, well.” He leans forward and kisses her on the cheek. His hand lingers on her upper arm and squeezes lightly. “I’m going to bed. I’ll bring up the rest tomorrow.” Then he runs upstairs, calling behind him, “You’re the best! Love you!”

Brienne shoves the TV and boxes into a corner where they won’t trip her if she needs a glass of water in the middle of the night, and goes back to watching her movie.

* * *

A long time ago, some handful of years that feel more like a lifetime than as long as it’s actually been, Jaime and Brienne met up _to reconnect_ , Jaime had said, even though there had never been any connection to re. In high school, Brienne hated the Lannisters, and they hated her in turn, or so she assumed, given Cersei’s derisive sneers in the hallway and the muttered insults and the kicking of her backpack in desk alleys, followed by a sweet, “Oh, gosh, I’m so _sorry_.” Technically Jaime had never done anything to provoke Brienne’s ire, but she lumped them together as one entity because that was how they seemed to exist, walking down the hallway together, sitting at lunch together, joining the same extracurriculars together. And sure, that made sense since they were twins and all, but the fact they seemed to have no other close friends made it...weird.

Jaime, of course, was adored by the masses, and somehow embodied every basic high school stereotype all at once. He was the class clown, the homecoming king, the star quarterback, and officially voted Most Likely to Succeed (along with Cersei), despite his mediocre GPA. Brienne worked on the yearbook committee and distinctly remembers pitching Jaime and Cersei as Cutest Couple, to the satisfying laughter of her peers. She had no real feelings toward Jaime at all, other than the assumption that he was a stuck-up brat like his sister, and Brienne was too busy mooning over Renly anyway to pay much attention, who turned out to be gay but will always have a place in her heart.

The point is: Brienne and Jaime were not, at all, friends. So when she got a Facebook request nearly a decade after they graduated, she mostly accepted out of surprise and curiosity, imagining that most of her graduating class only wanted to add her to see if she got fat or disfigured or came out as a lesbian. A baffling message came a couple days later: _Brienne! It’s been ages! How have you been??_ Again, she replied mostly out of curiosity and a sick desire to see if he had ever found a way to legally marry his sister. They had a pleasant albeit formal conversation that lasted about an hour before Brienne fell asleep, and woke up the next morning to a video of a cat trying to jump from an arm chair to a table and missing its mark by a solid foot. Jaime’s caption read, _Same_. She replied, _lol_.

The messages continued despite Brienne’s passivity. She never initiated conversation with him, but that didn’t seem to deter his attention. He would send her memes he found, ask about some random detail of her life she hadn’t yet explained and which seemed too personal for the casual topics they were covering (mostly movies, _Have you seen…, omg I love that one have you seen his other movie…,_ or, _No I’ll put that on the list_ , followed by live-messaging each other while they watched the other’s recommendation), but she would answer because no one had been this interested in her literally ever, and she had nothing to hide anyway. After two weeks, she realized a day hadn’t gone by where he didn’t reach out to her, and eventually he asked if she’d like to go see a movie with him.

They met at the theater, and the first thing Jaime said was, “How have you managed to get even taller?” They hugged as if they really were old friends, and Brienne had to shove her hands in the pockets of her hoodie after to keep him from seeing her tremble. She wasn’t nervous. It would be ridiculous to be nervous over meeting someone she wasn’t even friends with, whom she’d only started speaking to a couple weeks ago and had developed a baffling interest in her, and she was only going along with it because her curiosity was strong enough to kill her if she let it.

Jaime was as beautiful as he had ever been, if not more. He kept his hair short and his clothes tight and tended to make unwavering eye contact when he spoke. Despite his friendliness and confidence, being around him felt awkward and new, but Brienne couldn’t tell if it was her or him or both of them. Jaime was obviously trying too hard to make a connection, like people seemed to do after a certain age, and she knew it was improper to ask questions like, “Hey, can we be best friends?” but she would have preferred it to the teeth-pulling getting-to-know-you nonsense they were attempting. For her part, she had trouble understanding why he liked her in the first place—men like Jaime Lannister didn’t often know how to have platonic relationships with unconventionally attractive women, and so tended to only surround themselves with people who looked like they belonged in a Miss America pageant. Let alone enough to reach out, and then reach out again, and again, and again.

Jaime bought his own ticket, and Brienne followed suit, taking it as a sign this was not a date. Not that it had felt like one, but she had trouble gauging these kinds of things (see: Renly). He offered her some popcorn in the theater, and the movie turned out to be just okay. He laughed at all the parts he was supposed to and gasped at the suspenseful moments and was actually, to her horror, one of those people who _clapped_ when the credits rolled.

“You’re horrible,” she said, picking up the half-empty tub of popcorn at their feet.

“What?”

“You don’t clap at the end of movies.”

“Why not?”

They stood and made their way out of the theater. “Because it’s useless. There are no performers to hear you clap.”

“So?”

She dumped the popcorn in the trash. “So, you just get up and leave.”

“But I want to clap.”

“You look like a dork.”

“Excuse me, you’re the dork who just threw away the popcorn.”

“Why wouldn’t I? That’s why there are trash cans at the exits.”

“No, you leave the popcorn for the ushers to pick up. They need work to do, otherwise their jobs will be eliminated. It’s job security. I’m _helping_.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Haven’t you worked a customer service job before?”

“Of course not. Have you?”

“I _still_ work a customer service job.” Technically she was the manager of a call center that handled credit card fraud. Also, she worked from home, so she never _saw_ customers, but she still had to talk to them.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Bite me.”

They had made it back to the lobby, and Brienne assumed their time was over now, awkward goodbyes, never speaking again, just a strange story to tell her dad, but Jaime said, “I’d rather go out for a drink.”

They went to a cheesy sports bar in the strip mall next door, where Jaime ordered an IPA and Brienne ordered a cider, and she watched the baseball game over his shoulder in lieu of thinking of something to say. He kept pausing the conversation every few minutes to reply to a text whenever his phone would light up on the table, and Brienne tried not to look but couldn’t help noticing the name Cersei in the notification window. Thankfully he had an entire arsenal of conversation topics at hand, which they volleyed between mouthfuls of greasy nachos, and as the night wore on the tension loosened. After three beers his shoulders relaxed and he smiled more and made slightly less compulsive eye contact. Their brief silences were easier to handle. After six beers, Jaime’s words started to slur a little and his eyes got soft. Brienne had stopped at her second cider and switched to water.

They closed the bar and paid their separate tabs (Jaime got the nachos), and Brienne had to steady him by the arm out the door.

“I can get an Uber,” Jaime said.

“Don’t worry about it.” She guided him to her car. He climbed into the passenger seat and mumbled his address so she could put it into her phone.

His head fell against the headrest and he closed his eyes.

“You’re not going to get sick, are you?” she asked.

“I don’t get sick anymore.” He said it solemnly, like a confession, like he was really saying something else.

The drive was silent until they got to the highway, and Jaime said, “I wanted this...before. In high school.”

“What?”

“To be friends with you. But you know how it is.” He drew a lazy circle in the air with his index finger. “We ran in different circles.”

“You mean you were too popular to be seen with me.”

He snorted. “You were the popular one.”

“Fuck off, prom king.”

He ticked off items on his fingers. “Volleyball star and fastpitcher, won athlete of the month on three different occasions. Drama club president—”

“I was just a stage hand.”

“You ran every production. Oh, and you wore a three-piece suit to prom and your dates were Renly _and_ Loras—”

“We were just friends. Well, they weren’t, but I was.”

“Then there was that time you started your own goddamn fight club.”

“It was an unofficial thing.”

“That almost got you suspended.”

“That _did_ get me suspended.”

“You were my fucking hero.”

She glanced over at him and tried not to let her surprise show. He looked back at her and suddenly she _got_ why he was so into her. Somehow, despite the class difference and the obvious aesthetic difference and the fact they’d never had a real conversation before two weeks ago, they were on the same wavelength. She didn’t have any evidence to go on besides her gut, but the feeling was there, resignation that she would be spending a very, very long time trying to figure out the mind of Jaime Lannister.

“You did whatever the hell you wanted and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of you,” Jaime continued. “You were everything I wasn’t. I thought you hated me.”

“I hated you because your sister spent the better part of four years bullying me.”

“And my sister bullied you because of me. Because of how much I talked about you.”

Brienne had no idea what to say to that. She didn’t even know how to process it. It all seemed so fucking absurd. Surreal, even, imagining what it would be like if she went back in time and told her seventeen-year-old self that in ten years, she’d be driving Jaime Lannister home drunk after a random movie friend-date, and he had actually totally adored her this whole time and she never knew.

The GPS guided her to a stop in front of a house in the wealthiest part of town, a few blocks from their old high school. It looked like a castle. He had mentioned briefly in one of their previous conversations that he lived with his brother and sister, and it seemed like one of the few topics he didn’t want to delve into, so she didn’t press, even though she thought it was odd that a grown-ass man would still live with his siblings, with the caveat being that they’re the Lannisters, which is synonymous with weird. Now that she saw _where_ he lived, it made more sense.

For the first time all night he seemed genuinely nervous, rubbing his hands together idly, fidgeting in his seat. “Can we...do this again maybe?”

“Sure.”

“As friends, though. Like. _Just_ friends.”

Something snapped in Brienne’s heart. She hadn’t been making any assumptions, but she didn’t recognize that a bubble of hope had been floating around in there until it popped. It sounded like every time a guy she liked wouldn’t date her because she reminded him more of his male friends than the ultra-femmy supermodel chicks they felt entitled to. The girls that always seemed so nice and... _mild_ when Brienne met them. Which was no slight against them, rather the men who seemed to enjoy overpowering them. She had come to terms with her appearance a long time ago, but that didn’t mean anyone else did. To all the men who “just didn’t feel that way” about her, she was too ugly to be worth their attention.

So she replied in the way that was expected of her, gracefully, because being friends with someone should be good enough. There was nothing wrong with having more friends.

“Just friends.”

He offered her a little smile, not the fake one he plastered to his face at all the correct moments, but a sincere one, one that made him look like he was young again and finally got a chance to talk to the girl he admired from afar. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thank you. I had fun.”

Then he got out of the car and she watched as he fumbled with his keys before entering the house.

By the time she got home, she had half a dozen messages waiting for her.

* * *

_Where do you keep the flour?_

Brienne is running on a treadmill, only halfway through her Sunday cardio workout. She has difficulty typing out a reply: _Dont have any??_

_Is that a question? How do you not know if you have flour?_

_Wtf would I make with flour_

_Pancakes! I’m trying to make pancakes_

_So u need Bisquick_

_You are a savage_

_Back of pantry top shelf. Probs expired_

_I don’t love you anymore_

She sends him the kiss emoji and adds, _Bacon too pls_

An hour later, she gets home and smells pancakes and bacon. True to his word, the TV and the rest of his stuff have been removed from the foyer.

“How many do you want?” he calls from the kitchen.

As she climbs the stairs, she asks, “How big are they? Pancakes or flapjacks?”

“I don’t know, medium?”

“Four.”

She showers quickly and dresses in her Sunday best, that is to say, sweatpants and a tank top. Downstairs she finds a stack of pancakes in front of her place setting at her tiny kitchen table, a pile of bacon mangled in the stirred way she likes, and her post-workout smoothie in a shaker. There’s even a sunflower from the garden propped in a Mickey Mouse cup.

Jaime is standing in front of the stove waiting for his own shortstack to bubble so he can flip them. He’s shirtless, of course, and wearing Brienne’s favorite pair of track pants. They look big on him, like all her clothes do when he wears them without her permission, and she tries as always to tamp down her trained self-consciousness in being bigger than most men. There is nothing wrong with her size, she tells herself.

“How was the workout?” Jaime asks the pancakes. “Break any records?”

“I’m not telling you anything until you tell me what happened.”

Brienne catches the subtle tension shift in his shoulders, and accidentally lets her stare glide down to the two dimples in his lower back. Never hurts to look, she thinks. There aren’t many benefits to being Jaime Lannister’s closest confidant, but having constant eye candy is definitely one of them. It’s like being friends with the personification of Instagram.

Jaime flips a pancake with unnecessary flourish. He does it three more times and says, “It’s nothing you haven’t heard before.”

Brienne takes a long pull from her smoothie as she thinks. “Tyrion brought home a bunch of prostitutes.”

“Cold.”

“Tyrion picked a fight with Cersei and now the household atmosphere is intolerable.”

“Warmer.”

“Your father threatened to sell the house unless you get a job.”

“Way colder.”

“You’re mad at Cersei for something.”

“Warmer.”

“Cersei asked you to back off for a while, and when you did, she accused you of shutting her out.”

He slides a pancake off the griddle and onto a plate. “Warm-ish.”

“Cersei went off on you for something.”

Another pancake. “Hot.”

“Cersei went off on you for...not having a job?”

Another. “Cold.”

“Cersei went off on you for—” And then it hits her. The only thing Jaime ever hesitates to talk about: “—trying to date again.”

He slides the last pancake onto the plate and doesn’t bother to answer.

As he takes a seat across from her, tea towel tossed over his shoulder, she asks, “How did you even meet anyone?”

He reaches out with a knife to slice some butter off the dish. “The internet is a valuable tool. You should try it sometime.”

“Don’t tell me you paid for one of those hoaky dating services filled with entrepreneur divorcees.”

“Nope.”

“FetLife?”

He glares at her as he butters.

“It’s an honest question,” she says.

“Not FetLife.”

She snorts a laugh and guesses, “Craigslist’s Seeking Arrangement.”

“Come on. I’m not Tyrion.”

That leaves the obvious answer. The painfully obvious answer she doesn’t even want to say out loud. But she does, because her curiosity always gets the best of her. “Tinder.”

In response, he pours syrup over his pancakes and sighs. “It’s just so...efficient.”

“You are too goddamn old to be on Tinder.”

“I’m not old.”

“If the girls on there are calling you Daddy, you fucking are.”

A flush creeps up his face. “They aren’t.”

“But they are younger than you. Significantly.”

“Some of them.”

A wave of nausea hits her and she decides to stop asking questions. The next thing out of her mouth was going to be how many hookups he’s had so far, but the answer is obviously _enough to piss off Cersei._ One would irritate her. Two would result in a conversation about bringing women to the house. Three or more would end in passive-aggressive arguments where neither of them bring up what they’re _really_ talking about, which is Jaime’s inability to sustain romantic relationships because Cersei takes up too much of his heart, (which, in return, she demands too much of it) and so has to depend on sexual fulfillment in meaningless hookups. Obviously this has been going on long enough to escalate to the situation it is now: nesting in Brienne’s house and making guilt-ridden pancakes and refusing to meet her eyes.

The longest relationship Jaime has ever had lasted three months, and it was while he was abroad in South America. Upon learning this, Brienne deduced, “So you had to flee the country to get out from under her.” He gave her a sharp look that told her she had maybe hit a button with that phrasing.

And there’s the drinking, of course. It took Jaime over a year to tell Brienne that he sent her a friend request the day he got out of rehab. There he learned he needed friendships outside of his family, so he thought he’d _aim high_ , he said, followed by an admission that she’s the best friend he’s ever had and that he loves her in a way he’s never loved anyone before. He was drunk when he admitted it, though, like he is most nights.

 _You’re my opposite_ , he had said. It was just a text conversation but she can always tell when he’s been drinking. _You’re good. A good person. The best person._

He also can’t keep a job, not because he isn’t a hard worker, but that he can’t find anything to sustain his interest for long, and his family is rich enough he doesn’t really need a job anyway. So he’ll pick something up for a while to ease his father’s contempt, gain a semblance of expertise in it, get bored, and quit. Brienne points out that he’s never been able to explore his hobbies or interests because Cersei eats up most of his attention. He never went to college even though he’d probably flourish in such an environment. He says he doesn’t want to, but Brienne knows he’s lying to himself because it’s easier to conform to his circumstances than amend them.  

“Well, I guess it’s good you’re looking,” Brienne says. It’s more than she can say for herself.

* * *

Brienne takes it all back at two in the morning when the mattress on the other side of her bedroom wall is squeaking methodically, and she can hear a high-pitched sighing that escalates into moaning, followed by Jaime’s polite _shhh_. She imagines beating him to a bloody fucking pulp. She imagines bearing her teeth at the girl and growling until she runs out of the house, clothes balled up in her arms. She imagines barging in on them and snapping a picture to send to Cersei, adding, _Come get your belongings._

But Brienne doesn’t do any of those things. She just fishes in the bathroom medicine cabinet for a pair of earplugs and takes a Xanax (what she calls her “Jaime pills” behind his back) and falls asleep thinking about the monologue she would tell her pretend therapist about this. She imagines the therapist nodding empathetically while writing, _Boundary issues._

The next morning, Brienne’s alarm goes off and she groggily trudges to the shower. She’s in the middle of shampooing her hair when she hears the door open, and picks up her loofah-on-a-stick as a weapon. Peeking out from behind the curtain, she sees Jaime in front of the toilet in a pair of black briefs, his hand on the wall while he takes a piss. His back is to her so she can’t see anything, but _still_.

“What the fuck are you doing,” she says.

“Peeing.”

“I’m in the shower.”

“You’re not using the toilet.” He finishes, shakes, and tucks himself back in before lowering the toilet lid and flushing.

The water goes scalding for a second and Brienne yelps, skitters to the far end of the tub, and shouts, “Jaime!”

“Love you too, honey,” Jaime says, and she hears the door open and shut again.

Boundaries, she thinks. They need to discuss boundaries.

* * *

They don’t discuss boundaries. Instead, in a fit of vengeance, Brienne downloads Tinder.

Brienne downloads Tinder because she catches sight of a redheaded girl who can’t be older than twenty doing a walk of shame out of the house at ten in the morning. Brienne is hosting a teleconference call on her work computer and, ironically, gets distracted by her lecture on workplace productivity watching the girl from her second story window get into a Dodge Neon, pull out her phone, and start texting. She finishes and drives off, and Brienne swears she’s smiling.

After the call, she tosses off her headset and storms into the guest bedroom, where Jaime is sprawled on the bed, texting with his phone lifted above his head, the purple floral duvet tangled between his legs. He hasn’t unpacked, but the television is now placed precariously on the ancient dresser drawers opposite the bed. The sheets are a dark grey, and she can see the outline of cumstains peppered around. Her father sleeps in this bed when he comes to visit. She’s going to kill him. She’s going to—

“Morning, sunshine,” Jaime says, lowering his phone to his chest. He looks at her with sleepy eyes and an easy smile that on anyone else she would read as an invitation to climb in bed with him. “Wanna get breakfast?”

“It’s Monday. I’m working.”

“I can go pick something up.”

“You can go fuck yourself.” She storms out of the room and back to her office, where she slams the door shut.

Muffled by the wall separating them, she hears Jaime call after her, “Wait, are you really mad?”

She takes her phone and searches for the Tinder app. While it downloads, Jaime adds, “It’s just some hot water! I thought it was funny.”

Oblivious, she thinks. He’s totally fucking _oblivious_.

* * *

Jaime accosts her three separate times that day.

The first is when she’s waiting for the toaster to pop so she can make her avocado toast for lunch. Jaime sneaks up behind her and puts his arms around her stomach and hooks his chin over her shoulder. “I’m sorry I upset you. I won’t pee while you’re in the shower anymore.” He pauses and adds, “Well, I will, but I won’t flush.”

She ignores him but doesn’t push him away. The toaster pops and she grabs the toast and puts it on her plate. Jaime starts swaying her side to side and it makes spreading the avocado difficult. It’s kind of a metaphor for their entire friendship.

“You’re being needy,” she says finally.

“You like it when I’m needy. It makes you feel important.”

Brienne bristles at that. At the whole thing, really. The feel of Jaime’s body pressed against her back, the stubble of his unshaven chin on her shoulder, the soft lull of his (totally performative) apologetic voice that she can feel reverberate all the way down her spine.

“I will not confirm or deny that,” she says.

He presses his mouth to the crook of her neck, breathes in, and squeezes her in a tight hug before letting go. His absence is cold and it makes her stomach drop, not that he let go, but that he had clung to her at all.

“So you’re not mad anymore?” he asks.

She finishes her toast and takes it off the counter to bring back to her office. “I will not confirm or deny that either.”

The second time is when she gets off work for the day and settles on the couch to flip through Tinder. She should be going to the gym, but swiping left and right is addictive, like a game where real people are products you either add to a wishlist or throw away. She thought no one in their right mind would swipe right on her, but in the scant few hours she’s spent on the damn thing, she has thirty matches (out of fifty right swipes) and a dozen conversations going. Her profile includes a selfie she took with Jaime probably two years ago (the last time she wore makeup), where Jaime has been cropped out, and a picture he took of her while they were hiking last spring. Her bio reads, simply, _I’m no lady._

Jaime falls onto the couch with his head in her lap, looking up at her. He’s wearing a pair of Brienne’s neon pink running shorts which look better on him than they do on her. He hasn’t worn a shirt in nearly forty-eight hours. Oh, to be a man, she thinks.

“Have I told you recently how much I love you?” he asks.

She swipes left on five men in a row. At first she was slow about it, reading each bio, thinking about how each one of them _might_ work, if this, that, and the other happened to be different about them, but as the profiles piled up, she began making decisions quicker once she realized she knew what she was looking for. “Every three seconds.”

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. I love you.”

“Mhm.”

“Have I told you how much I appreciate you?”

“Not as often, no.”

“I appreciate you. You’re the best thing in my life.”

“Sure, okay.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I never know what to believe.”

“What does that mean?”

She stops on a picture of a big ginger dude with an epic beard drinking an entire pitcher of beer. She doesn’t know what makes her stop, exactly. It might be the artful composition and lighting of the photograph, or the fact that he doesn’t look attractive at all, or that beer is rolling down his beard. He has gauges in his ears and tattoos down the entirety of both arms. She clicks on his bio and it says, _I only date women who can best me in battle._ The remaining two pictures are of his dog. The card is highlighted in blue, which she just now realizes is different than the other ones.

She pushes the phone in Jaime’s face. “What does the blue mean?”

He takes it from her, a wrinkle between his eyebrows. “Are you—oh my god, you’re on Tinder.”

“You made it sound so appealing last night.”

He lowers the phone and glares up at her. “Is that what this is about? Sansa?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So what if she takes the low road now and again?

He shoves the phone back in her hand. “It means he super-liked you. It's cheesy and gross. You only get one super-like a day. Are you going to swipe right?”

“Of course I’m going to swipe right. Look at him.”

“His name is Tormund, for godsake. He looks like a beast.”

“Yeah, well, so do I.” She swipes right. It’s a super-match.

Jaime has been silent for three seconds too long. She looks at him. “What?”

“You’re not a beast. I mean, you are, but like. In a good way.”

She makes a noise in her throat that’s kind of a laugh but more of a scoff. “Tell that to every man who’s ever dumped me for prettier girls.”

“They’re idiots.”

“You’re an idiot,” she says before she can stop herself. She doesn’t like the logical connection that makes, that she sees Jaime as one of the men who have rejected her, even though there has never been anything on the table to reject.

He takes it in stride and rolls off her lap. “I’m an idiot about to get you dinner. Pick a movie while I’m out?”

Brienne opens her mouth to reply, but he interrupts with, “Something made in the past twenty years.”

“Fine,” she mutters, and closes out Tinder to check her Letterboxd queue.

The third time is after she’s gone to bed but isn’t quite asleep. She always sleeps with her bedroom door open for some reason, airflow maybe, or just a bad habit, but since she has company she only keeps it open a crack. The hinges squeak as it opens wider and she hears soft footfalls on the carpet, then feels a dip in the far side of the mattress. A cloud of alcohol smell follows. Whiskey, she thinks. He’s gotten into her whiskey, which she only keeps on hand for making hot toddies when she’s sick. He must have torn apart the whole kitchen to find it.

He’s close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body but far enough they aren’t touching. He doesn’t say anything, but he can probably tell she’s not asleep. She’s lying on her back and he’s on his side, facing her; his breath ghosts past her shoulder.

His voice is low as he asks, “Are you in love with me?”

Her heart begins to pick up pace, but her words remain even. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m always drunk.”

“You won’t remember this tomorrow.”

“So you may as well be honest.”

She rolls on her side so that she’s facing him too. It’s too dark to see him properly, but she catches the line of his bare shoulder, the glint of a street light reflected in his eyes. “You said ‘just friends’ when we started hanging out. You drew a line and I abide by that.”

“So you’re not in love with me. Even if I had never said ‘just friends,’ we would still be exactly what we are.”

“I’m not secretly pining for you, you narcissistic asshole.”

He falls silent for long enough that Brienne starts to doze off. Then he says, “You almost never say it back.”

“What?”

“When I tell you I love you. You only say it back when I demand it. Sometimes I think…”

He trails off, and Brienne says, “Tell me.”

“I think you just tolerate me, and you like keeping me around because I’m a mess you can tidy up. A trainwreck to gawk at. Something to validate your existence because I need you more than you need me.”

Her heart stops. Jaime has never shown any indication that he’s even capable of this amount of introspection, or that he thinks about their relationship as anything more than a passive consistency in his life, like a boulder in a raging river. “Where is this coming from?”

“Sometimes I don’t even think you like me.”

“Of course I like you.”

“You don’t show it. I hug you and tell you how much I love you and do nice things for you and buy you gifts. What do you do?”

She tries to swallow but her throat is too dry. “I…” she begins, and stops, tries again: “I’m always here for you. I listen to all the things you tell me. I offer my insight. I answer every text.”

“That’s exactly it. You’re always reacting to me. Do you know how many days we haven’t spoken since we started talking? Six. Six days in four years. I know that because those were the days I intentionally didn’t text you to see if you would reach out. And you didn’t. If I stopped texting you or inviting you to go places, our friendship would fall apart.”

“This is a long jump from asking if I’m secretly in love with you.”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does. It’s like...opposite action. I learned that in rehab. Sometimes when you have a problematic behavior, the reality is the opposite.”

She’s starting to lose her patience. “If you want me to be more affectionate, just ask. Don’t analyze me into the ground.”

“I don’t want to ask you to be more affectionate. I want you to love me enough that you _want_ to show it. And since you don’t, the only explanation is that you either don’t love me at all, or you’re harboring feelings you refuse to express.”

She rolls onto her other side and grinds her teeth together.

“See? You shut down during conflict.”

“You ambushed me. It’s midnight. You’re intoxicated.” She takes a deep breath. She can only say it because she’s no longer looking at him: “And do you ever think maybe you’re just too...much? That maybe I would reach out to you if you didn’t constantly bombard me? That I would express affection if you gave me room to act rather than forcing me to react?”

He doesn’t say anything, but she’s on a roll, so she continues. “I love you. I really do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t prioritize your presence in my life. I wouldn’t let you stay in my house. But you do a lot of things that piss me off. You have no consideration for my space, none for my comfort, and none for my happiness. If you did, you would have asked a lot sooner if I was in love with you.”

She snaps her mouth shut as soon as the words are out. She didn’t say that. She didn’t. She takes it back. She squeezes her eyes closed and goes back in time where she ends her rant much earlier. No, she doesn’t say any of this at all, but tells him to shove off so she can get some sleep.

Silence again, but this time she can’t handle it. She can hardly breathe. She wants to say something else, but anything she can think of will only make it worse.

Finally, Jaime says, “Goodnight, Brienne,” and rolls off the bed. He keeps the door open a crack on his way out.

* * *

Tormund messages Brienne a respectable time after she swiped right. It’s a little before noon the next day when she gets the notification, and his message reads, _Would you rather fight a hundred duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?_

It’s not the greatest of introductions, but it beats the six “hey”s she got yesterday. She waits a solid twenty minutes before replying, _A hundred horse-sized ducks._

_Confident, are ye?_

_I have a master’s degree in giant duck fighting_

She hasn’t left her office except to go to the bathroom, run to the gym on her lunch break, and grab a snack or two from the kitchen. Jaime hasn’t shown his face, but she knows he’s around—she can hear his new TV from his room. He must have set up a Roku or something. She thinks he’s bingeing an old sitcom based on the canny laugh track. _Seinfeld_ , maybe, given the bassline thrum she catches on occasion.

It takes Tormund exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes to ask if she’s free to grab a drink tonight, after a significant amount of back-and-forth flirting. He sounds a bit like he spends most of his time on Reddit. She knows the type; she’s dated guys like him before and hopes Tormund surprises her by being nothing like them.

After work, she showers and does her hair and puts on makeup, even though all of it is probably expired. She can hear Jaime moving around and relocating to the living room. He hasn’t texted her all day or knocked on her door or attempted to communicate with her at all. It’s only an hour later when she’s ready to go that she comes down the stairs and sees him. He’s sprawled on the couch with a PS4 controller in his hands playing Overwatch, wearing yet another pair of her shorts, these ones baby blue and even smaller than the pink ones. They also have _ANGEL_ written on the butt in rhinestones. They were a gag gift from Loras for her twenty-something-ith birthday, back when that kind of thing was still in style. She doesn’t know where he even found them, but she definitely knows they’re too small for him to be wearing any underwear underneath.

He glances at her from the corner of his vision when she makes it to the bottom of the stairs, and then does a double-take. He’s only seen her dolled up like this a couple times, and she thinks he might have been plastered for each. She wants it to be one of those _She’s All That_ moments where he suddenly realizes she was beautiful all along, he just couldn’t see it without three pounds of makeup, enough hairspray to fumigate a small mansion, and a pair of Spanx holding her entire torso together.

But then he says, “What the fuck.”

“What?” She sits on the bench in the foyer and fumbles around for her only pair of (flat) dress shoes. She doesn’t know how tall Tormund is, so she doesn’t want to take any chances.

“You look...awful.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

“Is this all for that Tormusk guy?”

“Tormund. I’m meeting him for a drink.”

“Looking like _that_?”

Normally she tolerates his teasing of her looks, but she doesn’t think he’s teasing right now. He has a line of four beer bottles at the base of the couch, and on the coffee table rests a whiskey glass with a finger still left in it.

“What’s wrong with looking like this?” she demands.

He leans forward to set the controller on the table. She glances at the screen and sees his Genji stats, because of course he mains Genji. And of course he’s playing on her account, so her 152 hours on Reinhardt is going to be marred by his drunken QP queueing.

“It’s not…” He gestures his hand up and down the length of her. “You.”

“It’s not me.”

“No. You—your eyelashes. I like them better blonde, not all caked in mascara. You can see the light through them. And your foundation is covering up your freckles. And your hair…”

“What about my hair?” She opens her going-out purse and tosses her wallet, phone, and keys in it. There are also a few condoms in there from the last time she went on a date, but like her makeup, they’re probably expired.

“I don’t know. It’s lovely all the time. Did you shave your legs?”

She’s wearing a tight, short skirt that makes her legs look like a giraffe’s and a flowy top to balance it out a bit. “Of course I shaved my legs.”

“You never shave your legs. Does that mean you’re…” His expression glazes over and refocuses. “Tell me you’re not going to fuck Tormusk.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your damn business who I fuck.”

“You gave me such a hard time about Sansa! You were mad at me all day.”

“Well you made it my business by fucking her three feet away from me separated by a thin veil of drywall.”

“We were quiet!”

“It’s _my_ house!”

“So? I get lonely and drunk and it just kind of...happens.”

She stands there, purse nestled in the crook of her elbow, stunned. “Lonely and drunk? Are you kidding me? You know what, nevermind. I’m going on a date with a man who doesn’t think I look awful and who likes dating women _his own age_ instead of size zero nineteen-year-olds on summer break.”

Then she storms out of the front door, and hears Jaime call behind her, “She’s twenty!”

* * *

So, bad news: it turns out Tormund works part-time at Costco and lives in his parents’ basement. Good news: the first question he asked her was, “What are your big three lifts?” which is a topic Brienne is very comfortable with.

The bar isn’t as crowded as it could be, and they have table service at least. Brienne orders a pilsner because they don’t have cider, and Tormund weirdly enough orders...mead. Brienne didn’t think most bars kept mead on tap, but it’s a strange time to be alive anyway.

“One-forty bench. Two-twenty squat. Three-fifty deadlift,” she says.

Tormund whistles. His profile pic didn’t do him justice—his eyes are wide and wild and he seems to know most of the people at the bar, which she takes to mean he’s a regular here. “Bench seems a bit light.”

She shrugs. “What can I say, I prioritize quads.”

The server comes with their drinks. Tormund starts talking about crossfit. She listens, even though she’s heard everything there is to hear about crossfit already from the six-month bout Jaime had doing it, before moving on to whatever his next interest was. Aerial workouts or something. Or a painting class maybe. Or fencing.

She offers barefoot running as the next topic of conversation. He says he has a pair of Vibrams but doesn’t wear them. He asks if she’s ever done paleo. No, she likes bread too much. She asks if he’s ever done intermittent fasting. No, he doesn’t have the willpower. Another regular comes by and claps Tormund on the shoulder. He’s also a large bearded man with gauges and tattoos. Brienne glances around and notices nearly _all_ the men look exactly the same, like they’re part of some tribe of dudes who not-so-ironically post to the MRA subreddit and whose interests never delve deeper than local craft beer and obscure health fads.

She uses the distraction to fumble in her purse for her phone. She has three missed texts from Jaime:

_I’m sorry_

_I should leave you alone but I don’t know where else to go_

The third text is a video of her TV screen where it looks like Genji is getting Play of the Game, but it's only a two-man ult.

It just seems so ridiculous. She’s on a date with crossfit curlbro who seems more interested in comparing whey protein brands than getting to know her. Her best friend is getting drunk on her couch wearing a pair of sparkly booty shorts and playing video games. Tormund seems to like her appearance, definitely. The first thing he said when he saw her was, “Wow,” which was a welcome surprise compared to Jaime’s, “You look awful.” On the other hand, Jaime has always been invested in her mind and heart, what makes her tick, what she’s passionate about. He loves her for the things she loves most about herself—her courage, kindness, honor.

Too bad he’s so fucking shallow, he only dates women whose #goodmorning #nofilter selfies get a thousand likes apiece, and not women who have three fake teeth because the real ones have been knocked out by other people’s fists (like Brienne). Or women who won their first pie eating contest at the age of seven and whose record remains uncontested to this day (like Brienne). Or women who only shave their legs on pain of death, or if they think they’re going to get laid (like Brienne).

She tries to steer the conversation to movies, because she feels like she can get to know someone decently well by their favorites. Tormund says proudly that his favorite movies are _The Dark Knight_ and _Boondock Saints_. She smiles in response and pretends that’s an adequate answer. When he asks her in return, she tells him _Lawrence of Arabia_ and he says he’s never heard of it. _Casablanca_ , she adds. He says he’s heard of it, but never seen it.

He’s hopeless. He’s totally hopeless. There isn’t an ounce of chemistry between them at all.

“My parents are in Vegas, so they’re not at the house,” he says.

So she goes home with him.

His basement is messy and littered with weight plates and dumbbells. There’s a sixty-inch TV in the corner and a king-size unmade bed, and on the other side of the room is a handmade squat rack. Brienne is drunk, but not so drunk she can pretend she doesn’t have total control over her mental faculties. Tormund’s tongue is in her mouth—he’s a terrible kisser, but at least he’s into it, unlike a lot of the dudes she’s been with, who seem to try to pretend she’s someone else—and she wonders if Jaime is texting her. Her purse is somewhere under her blouse and Spanx. Tormund doesn’t bother taking off her skirt, but he does manage to pull off her underwear. He’s saying a lot of nice things about how he loves her body and  _christ, you’re the hottest woman I’ve ever met_ and that feels good, but the sex is only adequate. It’s rushed and sloppy and overeager, like most men who watch too much porn instead of researching how to have good sex. She thinks about Jaime while Tormund is fucking her and only moans out of politeness. She adamantly tries to stop thinking about Jaime, but she can’t. Jaime, whose favorite movie is _Cool Hand Luke_ for painfully obvious reasons, and has not only seen and read everything ever made, can critically discuss it all at length too. Jaime, the feel of his mouth on her neck, the slope of his lower back in her track pants, his messy hair, his stupid smile, the way he looks at her—

She comes out of seemingly nowhere, which has never happened before, and it shocks her as much as it does Tormund, who says a lot of curse words and then abruptly stills and lets out a long, satisfied breath.

“Wow,” he says again.

She nudges him off of her and gets up to find the bathroom. When she does, it’s filthy, of course it’s filthy, everything about men like Tormund is. There’s black mold in the toilet and in the corners of the ceiling, and the sink is caked in toothpaste and piled rings of ginger hair.

She sits on the toilet and pulls her phone out of her purse. There’s a thick feeling in her throat, and her breath is coming out in short bursts, and tears begin to sting her eyes. Jaime hasn’t texted. She begins to type, _I’m sorry_ , but then erases it. She’s not sorry. She can’t be. She didn’t do anything wrong. _I miss you_. She deletes it. _I love you._ Deletes. _We need to talk about this._ Deletes.

She imagines him waiting up for her, watching the ellipse bubble rise and fall, wondering what she’s going to say.

 _I lied last night_ , she types.  _I'm totally, stupidly in love with you._

A heavy fist thrums on the door. “You fall in?”

“Just a second,” she says, and deletes the text.

* * *

Brienne makes it home around six in the morning after a handful of hours of terrible sleep in Tormund’s basement. She didn’t _want_ to spend the night, but she was feeling petty and wanted Jaime to worry about her. Tormund woke up for long enough to give her a lazy wave goodbye and a grunted, “Have a good one.”

She gets yesterday’s mail from the box and opens her front door. The first thing she notices is that the television is on, playing what looks like a YouTube makeup tutorial. The second thing she notices is a twenty-year-old redhead on her couch eating cereal. Sansa, Jaime had called her. She’s dressed at least, in a pink crop top and cutoff shorts. Even with bedhead, she looks like she just walked out of a photoshoot, and any moment now Tyra Banks is going to tell her that she’s America’s Next Top Model.

Her eyes go wide when she sees Brienne, and her spoon hovers an inch below her mouth, dripping milk back into the bowl. She asks, “Are you Jaime’s wife?”

Brienne dumps the mail on the table by the door, drops her purse, and kicks off her shoes. “God, no.”

“Sorry. It's just...the last guy I dated had a wife.”

Brienne starts flipping through the mail.

“So you’re his…” Sansa begins.

“Friend.”

“Oh. Cool.” They’re silent for a long moment while Brienne flips through the envelopes. “So...does he, like, talk about me or anything?”

Brienne looks up long enough to glare at her. “No.”

“Do you think he like, likes me? From what you know of him, I mean. It's just I always do this thing where I go for emotionally unavailable men, and—”

“Probably not.”

Sansa crunches through a mouthful of cereal forlornly.

“It’s not you,” Brienne offers. “He doesn’t like anybody.”

“He likes you. He talks about you all the time. That’s why I asked if you were his wife. I thought he was lying, the way he talks about you.”

“Why would someone tout his wife to his mistress?”

Sansa shrugs. “I don’t know. Dudes are weird.”

Brienne opens a bill and pretends to be casual. “What does he say about me?”

“Just, like. How we can have sex and stuff but his heart belongs to someone else, and that’s why he can’t be in a relationship.”

“Did he specifically name me when he said that?”

“No, but—”

Precious child, she thinks. He hasn’t told her about Cersei. “Then he’s not talking about me.”

“Are you sure? He sounded pretty—”

“I’m sure.” Brienne tosses the bill on the table and adds, “Make yourself at home. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

She trudges upstairs and stops in the bathroom, where she wipes off her makeup and takes a quick shower and gets into clothes that don’t make her feel like she’s being slowly squeezed to death. After, she turns on her work computer and plugs in her very dead phone. Jaime is still asleep—his car is outside and his door is closed and she can’t hear the TV.

When her phone comes on again, she has a text from Jaime that says, _You’re still not home_ , sent at 3:09 a.m. The next text reads, _Should I be worried?_

_Tell him if he hurts you I will kill him_

_I will murder his face off_

_God you’re probably having sex_

_Are you having sex?_

_You had sex with Tormusk_

_I can’t believe you had sex with Tormusk_

She doesn’t bother replying, and instead switches to Tinder to check her messages. She has a couple that don’t seem promising at all, and out of habit (she’s already made a habit and it’s only been two days, christ) she flips through a few cards, left, left, left, left.

She stops.

Jaime fucking Lannister is grinning up at her. It’s a picture of him she took about six months ago when he was neither drunk or hungover, and they were at brunch on a Sunday, and Cersei and Tyrion were out of town, and Jaime had just started a physical trainer licensure program, and everything was okay for a very short window of time. She clicks on his profile. His bio is blank (which is _obnoxious_ ) but his pics are filled out—all of them are either selfies he had taken to send her, or pictures she took of him when he wasn’t looking.

It doesn’t make sense. You can’t see Tinder profiles if you’re Facebook friends with someone. So she switches to Facebook and searches for Jaime’s name. The little icon beside his picture says _Add Friend_. What the fuck. What the everloving _fuck_. He unfriended her for having sex with another man? It’s bullshit, she thinks. It’s fucking—

You know what, she tells herself, fuck it.

She goes back to Tinder where Jaime’s face is still smiling stupidly at her. Her thumb hovers over his picture, and then she does it. She swipes right.

_It’s a match!_

“No,” she says out loud. “No fucking way.”

Jaime had already right-swiped her. Her heart races. This can only mean one of two things:

  1. Jaime unfriended her on Facebook for the sole purpose of finding her Tinder profile and swiping right as some kind of passive-aggressive gesture of love.
  2. Jaime unfriended her on Facebook in a drunken fit of resentment for sleeping with Tormund, found her Tinder profile on accident, and swiped right as a malicious deed to—what? Send her into a tailspin? Get her hopes up only to dash them away with continued interaction with the Sansas of the world? Prompt her to confront him?



Downstairs, she can hear the faucet running, the clink of ceramic. At least Sansa cleans up after herself. Then some shuffling, and the front door opening and closing. Out the window, Brienne can see her get into her Dodge Neon and drive off. Not smiling this time. Not texting.

Brienne has no idea what to do. This is the kind of situation she’d text Jaime about for his input, but since it’s about him, she can’t very well do that. She could text Renly, but the thought of getting him up to speed on the situation is a daunting task. They don’t talk much anymore, but when one of them reaches out, they tend to text the entire day. Whenever Renly is in town, they grab lunch and end up staying at whatever restaurant long enough to order dinner, too. So, as usual, she decides not to take any action. Let Jaime see that they’re a match and be the one to react to her for once.

Thankfully the work day is plenty busy, and she can space out for a couple hours. She hears Jaime stir sometime midmorning. He gets into the shower, and then his electric razor starts to buzz and he begins to hum some song she’s never heard before. He goes back into his room and then a handful of minutes later, there’s a soft knock on her office door.

“Are you on a call?”

“No.”

“May I enlist your assistance then?”

She takes a deep breath before climbing out of her office chair and opening the door. Jaime is wearing gray slacks and a white dress shirt, the collar popped up and a red and gold tie roped around his neck.

He points to the tie. “Can you…”

“You can’t do it yourself?”

“Cersei always does.”

“You can fucking google it.”

He pouts. “I’m running late.”

“For what?” Her will crumbles immediately, and she steps into his space to begin tying, wider side over thinner, through the loop...

“Tyrion got me a job interview.”

She raises her eyebrows in lieu of a question.

“I don’t know. Something something contractor.”

“What kind of contractor?”

“There’s more than one kind of contractor?”

“Contractors do all sorts of different things. They’re just people who are contracted to do a certain task.”

“Oh. Well I guess I’m unprepared.”

“I thought Tyrion said he wouldn’t try to find jobs for you anymore.”

“He made an exception. He said this one was glaringly well-suited for me.”

She hums in response, and fits the pointed end of the tie through the knot. Their bodies are too close—she can smell mouthwash on his breath and aftershave on his skin. His hair is combed to the side. He looks nothing like the maniacal trainwreck she loves.

She tightens it, reaches around his neck to fold the collar down. He holds her arms in place lightly so she won’t pull away and takes a step closer to her. They’re positioned like they’re at a middle school dance.

“I missed you last night,” he says. His gaze is curious, inquiring, not foggy or glazed over. He never says these kinds of things unless he’s been drinking, but he's sober.

She swallows and gathers up her courage. “You seemed to find a replacement just fine.”

“I don’t care about her.”

“Then why are you fucking her?”

He continues staring at her, still too close, hands on her arms until they slide down to her shoulders and over her back, settling on her waist. “I don’t know. I was—”

“Drunk,” she says, not backing away or backing down. “You can’t blame all your shitty actions on being an alcoholic.”

“You went and fucked a mountain goat last night. What was I supposed to do?”

“Again, why is it any of your business?”

He gives her a look he’s never given her before, somewhere between bewildered and belittling. “You have no idea, do you?”

“No idea about what?”

“You’re oblivious. You’re totally oblivious.”

“ _I_ _'m_ the oblivious one? You’re the oblivious one.” When he continues looking at her with that stupid expression, face inches from her own, mouth just right _there_ and she’s unable to kiss it—and god, she would, she fucking would if it would get him to get his head on right, end this ridiculous shit show, but she can’t, she won’t—she says, “I can’t keep a handle on you. You’re a goddamn mess. One minute you’re under your sister’s thumb, the next you’re fucking some teenager from Tinder, the next you’re drunk out of your mind, then you’re dragging me through the muck with you so you don’t have to go it alone, and now you’re standing here holding me like I’m something precious.”

It’s his turn to let his eyes flicker down to her lips. “You are precious.”

He leans forward. Their noses brush. She stops breathing.

And then she forces herself to take a step back, out of his grasp. He lets her go, lets his hands drop to his sides, looks down in—what? Disappointment? Exhaustion?

“You should get to your interview.” She clears her throat, pulls the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands, looks at a point past his shoulder rather than at him. “And when you get back from your interview, I think—I think you should pack your things and move back home.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I may not have told you everything there is to know about why I left.”

“It wasn’t because of the dating?”

“Not entirely.”

“The drinking.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Do you remember last month, when—” From the guest bedroom, his alarm starts to go off, a high-pitched blaring noise. “I have to get to the interview. We’ll talk when I get back.” He rushes to the bedroom where she hears him silence his alarm, put his keys in his pockets, and shoulder on his suit jacket.

“And we’re going to settle this?” she calls after him.

“Yes.” He returns from the bedroom and takes both of her hands in his, in his nice suit, all dolled up like she was last night. She wants to have hope for him. She does. “And if you still want me to move out, I will. And if you never want me to speak to you again, I won’t.” He leans in again and kisses her cheek, lingers there a beat longer than he has to, and runs downstairs.

Last month, she thinks. She doesn’t remember anything particularly out of the ordinary. She goes back to her desk (the front door opens, then slams shut, a pause, Jaime’s car starting and pulling out of the driveway) and flips through her desk calendar. Meeting, meeting, movie night with Jaime, dentist appointment, meeting, PTO.

She stops at PTO. She had forgotten; she took a day off because Jaime was sick. He had shown up at her house the night before with a bit of a cough and sniffling all the way through _Mean Girls_ , and he barely touched his half of the pizza. She asked if he was feeling alright and he said it was just a cold, nothing serious, but by the time the movie ended, Jaime was barely conscious and running a fever hot enough to nearly burn her hand when she touched it to his forehead.

“You should stay here tonight,” she said. “I don’t want you driving home like this.”

He shook his head and muttered, “Cersei…” His face had developed a greenish pallor with the exception of the tip of his nose which was red. He’d begun trembling.

“Cersei will have to deal with it.”

“Yes, m’lady,” he said, and it was all she could do to get him up the stairs. She had to help him out of his jeans and shirt, and he collapsed on the guest bed, where she tucked him in, and brought him some NyQuil and a box of tissues and a small trash bin. When she left him to sleep, he caught her wrist and said, “Don’t go.”

No, she wanted to say, I need to go to bed. I have work tomorrow. I don’t want to get sick too. But what she really said was, “Fine,” and crawled into bed with him, where he mumbled, “‘m cold,” so she sighed and inched closer and he curled into her arms and she held him, his head tucked under her chin, even though he was as hot as a miniature sun. She could hear his rasping breath, feel the shaking under his skin. She pressed her mouth to the crown of his head and breathed in, his eighty-dollar shampoo and all the other grossly expensive product he put in it that made it look so perfect and blonde and fluffy.

She fell asleep easily, too easily, and slept better than she had in years.

The next morning Jaime was still sick, so she called off from work to make sure he had soup and fluids and medicine, even though he slept nearly the entire day. Looking back, the only odd thing about that day, other than falling asleep together, was the number of times she caught Jaime’s silenced phone light up with a new message. Jaime was curled up on the couch under a mile-high pile of blankets and _Friends_ on TV, dead to the world. His phone was resting on the coffee table.

After hours of this, his phone going off every few minutes, she finally grabbed it up from the table. Just to make sure it wasn’t an emergency. Jaime had forty-seven texts from Cersei and fourteen missed calls. Brienne didn’t read all of them since she could only see the preview of the most recent one, which said, _She’s not going to love you when she learns what you really are._

Another one came in: _When she sees the version of you I see._

Brienne set the phone back on the table, face down, so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at it again. It had made her angry, obviously, but she shoved all of it aside. Jaime’s relationship with his sister wasn’t Brienne’s business unless he made it her business, and she shouldn’t have been snooping anyway.

By late evening, with the help of some medicine, Jaime was feeling well enough to drive himself home. He thanked her for taking care of him, told her he loved her, and left. She didn’t end up getting the bug herself, and so she didn’t think anything of the day and night they’d spent together. She had actually forgotten all about it until now, but she can’t think of any other noteworthy things that happened last month.

She realizes too that Jaime hasn’t mentioned Cersei since he came to stay with her, hasn’t been keeping his phone on his person like he always does in order to reply to her within a handful of minutes or answer any phone calls. It’s always in his room, or he leaves it in his car, or silent and face-down on a table. In fact, now that she looks back, the lack of Cersei has been eerie, and Jaime’s excessive drinking and floozing about (excessive even for him) suddenly makes more sense. This must be the worst fight they’ve ever had, and Brienne can’t think of a single thing that could be worth such a major fallout.

* * *

It’s inching toward late afternoon when Brienne gets a text from Jaime: _Long interview. Can I pick up dinner for us?_ and she begins typing out a reply when the doorbell rings. She sets her phone down to go answer it, and when her hand touches the doorknob an overwhelming sense of dread comes over her.

She opens the door and there’s Cersei smiling tightly at her. “Brienne,” she says, smile widening even if it’s not meeting her eyes. Her hair is short now, unlike the long golden waves from their high school days, and she’s wearing a professional-looking black dress with stiletto heels and a giant purse in the crook of her arm. She clutches a manilla folder in her hand.

“Cersei?” Brienne asks, in case she’s wrong and this woman is some solicitor who just happens to bear a spitting resemblance to her high school bully.

“May I come in?”

Definitely Cersei.

Brienne steps aside and lets her in out of politeness, and even as she does it she thinks of a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t. Cersei enters and glances around Brienne’s house in a way that makes her self-conscious of the single spider web in the corner of the foyer, even though the rest of the house is spotless. Cersei turns her attention to Brienne and opens her arms wide for a hug. Brienne accepts, albeit awkwardly, and Cersei says, “It’s so good to see you. It’s been too long,” before letting go.

“Yeah,” Brienne says. Her sense of etiquette finally kicks in. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“No, thank you, I can’t stay long.”

Brienne gestures to the couch, around which are a dozen beer bottles from Jaime’s binge last night.

“I see Jaime’s been drinking,” Cersei says, gingerly stepping around the bottles and taking a dainty seat. “He doesn’t drink at home, you know. Only when he’s with you.” And then she laughs, as if it were a funny anecdote. It also can't possibly be true.

Brienne sits in the arm chair beside the couch, offers a tense smile in response, and says, “It’s good seeing you and all, and I hate to be blunt, but—”

“Of course,” Cersei interrupts. “I’m sure you’re very busy.” She holds up the manilla envelope and adds, “As it were, I’ve been going through some old things, and I found some of the notes Jaime wrote me while he was bored in class.” She hands it over to Brienne, who takes it hesitantly. “I thought you might find them...enlightening.”

Brienne opens the folder. It’s filled with college-ruled pages torn out of spiral-bound notebooks, unfolded from the diagonals and squares they were originally tucked into. The one on top is written in pencil in Jaime’s small all-caps writing, faded so much it’s nearly illegible.

_My Queen—_

_We changed seats in trigonometry. I sit behind the Beast now. I can barely see around her hulking form. I find myself distracted by the back of her uneven bowl cut. It must be after gym class because I smell a distinct odor from her. Her outfit looks like a blind woman fell into a Big & Tall outlet store and dragged out the first things she grasped. What a travesty of a creature. _

Brienne can’t bring herself to read anymore. Her breath is stopped up in her throat and her heart begins to pound. She looks up from the folder and says, “Why are you showing this to me?”

Cersei reaches over and puts a hand on Brienne’s wrist, a pitying look on her face. “I thought it might be important for you to know how he really felt about you.”

“It doesn’t matter what he said about me in high school. What matters is—”

“That he loves you now?” She laughs again, and Brienne is getting dangerously close to slapping the grin off her face. “How does he show it? By telling you his problems? Getting drunk on your couch? Eating your food? Pouting at you until he gets what he wants from you?”

Brienne bites the inside of her cheek.

“And I bet he _tells_ you he loves you too, doesn’t he? Probably more than any person should, like he’s trying to convince himself of it by saying it over and over. It makes you feel important, how much he says he loves you, how much he needs you. But you’re not the first woman he’s done this to, and you won’t be the last.”

“He does love me.”

“Has he brought that redhead over yet? The young one? Did he tell you he’s been seeing her multiple times a week for the past three months?”

“It’s not my business who he fucks.”

“But still, you’d think he’d at least _mention_ it. You two are _so_ close after all.” Cersei taps the folder. “Keep reading.”

Brienne’s curiosity gets the best of her once again. She flips to the next page. This one is in blue pen, so at least she can read it.

_They ought to put the Beast in a cage rather than letting her loose in our poor school as if she were an actual student. I should call the Smithsonian and say we have a real live Neanderthal for them. She belongs where people can appreciate her._

_Still, I do pity her. It’s obvious she’s in love with Renly. It’s sad really, loving someone who can’t even see you. Not only could he never love her back, probably no one will, regardless of their orientation._

_—J_

_PS Strike that, I forgot beastiality exists. There is hope for her yet!_

With shaking hands, she turns to the next one.

_My Darling Sister—_

_Do you remember when I brought a keg to Oberyn’s party last year, out of the kindness of my heart? I was thinking of cashing in my favor. I’d like to ask Oberyn to woo the Beast, invite her to homecoming. That’s all. Just a simple invitation. He doesn’t have a car, remember, so he’ll tell her to meet him at the park, and they’ll walk over to the dance._

_Then, the night of, when she’s waiting, I propose we toss a trashcan over her head, take a picture, post it all around the school and title it, To Catch a Beast. It'll be art in its purest form._

Brienne’s chin trembles and her breath comes in shallow bursts. She remembers that—the setup, anyway, but the follow-through never happened. Oberyn did invite her to homecoming, and she told him yes. She even got her hopes up about it, bought a dress and everything, then she took a bad fall in volleyball and spent the weekend at home (a torn ACL, they thought, but it turned out to be a severe sprain). He took her sudden cancelation well, but at school the next week, she tried talking to him and he evaded her, came off as cold and ran away whenever she tried to approach him. She always thought he resented her for canceling on him, but overall the experience had given her a big boost of confidence—a cute boy liked her enough to ask her to homecoming, after all—if not a bit of guilt for her first time breaking someone’s heart. It never occurred to her that it might have been a prank.

Against her better judgment, she goes to the next one.

_The Beast got an A on her math test, a surprising feat for a Neanderthal. She also pitched a no-hitter last night (I went to the game while you were at dance practice and missed you every moment of it). Renly has begun initiating conversation with her of his own accord. He sits in front of her now. He just congratulated her on being the only one to get an A on the test. I failed it but only because my time with you is more important to me than learning about triangles, a lesson I will surely never use._

_Now Renly is asking her if she wants to see a movie sometime with him and Loras. The back of her neck is turning an ugly shade of red. This is terrible. Save me from this hell._

_Counting down the minutes until I see you again,_

_J_

There are more after that. All of them are the same, except the commentary on her athletic achievements grows more detailed. He went to most of her games when Cersei was busy, it looks like, simply to ridicule her in the next day’s note. He talks about her outfits, compares them to her other outfits, notices when she gets a haircut, continues to observe her relationship with Renly develop, condescendingly remarks on his surprise over her academic success, and talks unceasingly about his love for Cersei.

She makes it to the end of the folder. There are over a dozen notes in total.

“There are more,” Cersei says softly. “I haven’t had time to go through them all.”

Tears are rolling down Brienne’s cheeks. “He said—he said he’d always adored me.”

“He was obsessed, certainly, but I wouldn’t call that adoration. I’d always thought you were a lovely girl, but his vitriol got the better of me over time, and I took his aggression out on you. I am very sorry about the way I treated you. It was Jaime’s doing.”

“These notes make it sound like he was in love with you.”

“Well,” Cersei says shyly, “he might have been, I don’t know. You know how affectionate he is. Sometimes I think it gets a bit misplaced, don’t you?”

Brienne shakes her head and hands the folder back. “You shouldn’t have shown me these.”

Cersei takes it, tucks it under her purse on her lap. “I’m sorry if they hurt you. I know it was a lifetime ago. I just—I thought you should know where he stood, and why I’ve been...unsupportive of your relationship these past few years. I didn’t think it was right to pursue someone he was so cruel to. At least without apologizing.”

Brienne opens her mouth to reply, but the front door squeals open and in walks Jaime with a plastic bag of food in his hand and a twelve pack of beer in the other. He freezes when he sees Cersei on the couch.

“What are you—”

His attention switches to Brienne. Their eyes meet and she catches his widening upon seeing that she’s crying. She averts her gaze and pulls a tissue from the box on the coffee table to dab at her eyes.

“Brienne and I were just talking about you,” Cersei says. “I stopped by to catch up.”

Jaime closes the door with his foot and enters the living room slowly, as if pulled by some magnetic force toward Cersei. He looks pale, like he’s about to be sick. “You didn’t.”

“I did. Remember? I told you I would.”

“What are you talking about?” Brienne demands.

Jaime and Cersei fall silent, but they’re giving a meaningful look to each other in lieu of a conversation.

Cersei’s lips purse together for a brief second before she smiles again and stands from the couch, folder in hand and purse on her arm. “I better be going.” She turns her attention to Brienne. “It was great seeing you again, Brienne.”

She stops in front of Jaime and hugs him. “I’ll be waiting for you at home,” she whispers, loud enough for Brienne to hear, and leaves.

When the door is shut, a suffocating silence falls over the room.

“Brienne—” Jaime begins.

“You lied,” she says. The tears have stopped but now she feels empty, all her insides dug out and scattered over the floor. “You told me I was your hero.”

“You were,” he says. He drops the bag of food on the table and the beer on the floor and kneels in front of her. His tie is loosened and his hair is disheveled because he probably drove home with the top down on his convertible. “You still are. Isn’t it obvious I was lying in those notes? That I was just intensely jealous of Renly and Loras and your grades and—”

“That’s bullshit,” she spits. He already knew about the notes. He was prepared for this. “You always do this. You do something shitty, then you cover it up with more lies.”

Jaime looks like he wants to reach out to her in some way, but he thinks better of it and lowers his hands to his lap. “Cersei told me—”

“Fuck Cersei. This isn’t her fault. This is on you.”

“Just—will you listen? Cersei always told me that if I pursued a relationship with you, she would show you the notes. But after rehab, I reached out to you anyway, and I placated her by telling her we were just friends, always just friends.”

“Then what happened?” Brienne asks. “What happened to start the fight?”

“I didn’t come home that night I was sick last month. I didn’t call her. I didn’t tell her where I was or when I’d be back. She lost it. Just fucking lost it. And I told her…” he trails off, looks down at his hands.

“You told her what?”

“I told her we had sex. It just came out. I think—I wanted to see what she would do. I wanted to call her bluff. And she didn’t do anything at first. She stewed on it for weeks, until she finally gave me an ultimatum: her or you. I didn’t hesitate. I chose you. I thought if I was going to be living here anyway, she’d have no access to you. But now it’s obvious—Tyrion must have just set up the interview to get me out of the house so Cersei could ambush you.”

“Well it worked. It all worked.” Tears begin to flood her vision again and she looks down at the tissue she’s ripping up. “The things you said in those notes…”

“They’re not true. You have to believe me.”

“Then why did you write them?”

“Because I’m in love with you. I always have been.”

A soft sob escapes her throat. She shakes her head and says, “No, you can’t. It’s a lie, just like the rest.”

This time he does take her hands, and she doesn’t pull them away. “It’s not a lie. When I got the match notification this morning, I took it as a sign. Of course I know how to tie a tie. I was going to tell you the whole thing.” He brings her knuckles to his lips and kisses them lightly—her knuckles, all warped and swollen from the punches she’s thrown, hands callused and ugly. Like the rest of her. The Beast. “I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry for all the things I wrote about you in those notes. I was young, and stupid, and attracted to a girl who didn’t look like Cersei. Who didn’t act like Cersei. Who refused to conform to anyone’s expectations. Who walked down the halls with strength and purpose, and worked hard, and offered kindness to everyone she met. It wasn’t until after we graduated that I realized how wrong I was, and I was devastated I’d missed my opportunity to get to know you instead of watching you from afar. I tore the house apart looking for those notes so I could destroy them. She must have kept them in a safe deposit box.” Jaime reaches out and swipes a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been so grateful to have you in my life. Every day I spend with you has been a gift I don’t deserve.”

Her gaze rises to meet his. He’s close again, like he was earlier that day. His hand is resting on her cheek, wiping away a tear with his thumb. He leans in and kisses her gently. She kisses back with hesitation. His lips are as soft as she’s always imagined, but she never imagined it would be like this, out of order: he broke her heart and then kissed her, not the other way around. She pulls away.

“You should go back to Cersei,” she says, standing. “She’s waiting for you.”

“Brienne…”

She walks around him toward the stairs. “Goodbye, Jaime.”

* * *

Open, shut. Open, stairs, packing, stairs, shut. It takes Jaime four trips to fill his car with the stuff he had brought to her house. When he doesn’t come back inside, she holds her breath and counts to ten, and when she releases it, a sob wracks through her body. She squeezes her pillow against her face and lets it turn soggy with tears. When she can’t cry anymore, she watches the sun set from her window, and when it gets dark, she climbs out of bed and checks the guest bedroom to make sure Jaime got all his things.

Jaime’s giant TV is still on the dresser, but the rest of his stuff is gone. The bed is made, even though she’ll need to unmake it to wash the sheets. A piece of paper is on the bedside table, folded in half. She picks it up. Jaime’s handwriting hasn’t changed much since he was a teenager. It’s messier now, bigger.

_What is most important to me is that you know I love you. No matter what you believe of me then, no matter what you think of me now, I hope you never doubt that I loved you yesterday, I love you today, and I’ll continue loving you tomorrow._

_—J_

She puts it back down on the table and goes into the bathroom, where she opens the medicine cabinet to take a Jaime pill. She tips the bottle to pour one into her palm, and when the pills slide back, she notices there are fewer of them than she remembers. A lot fewer.

She freezes, pieces it together, then closes the pill bottle shut and rushes downstairs. The food is still on the table, but the beer is gone. She goes into the kitchen and opens the pantry, pushes the cans and containers around looking for where she last put her whiskey. It’s gone too.

Back upstairs, where she left her phone on her desk. No texts or missed calls. Despite her trembling hands, she finds Jaime’s number and calls him. The line rings and rings, then clicks over to voicemail: _You’ve reached the voicemail of Jaime Lannister. If you’re calling because I owe you money, remember, a Lannister always pays his debts. Sometimes it just takes awhile. Leave a message._

She hangs up and finds Cersei’s number which _of course_ isn’t in her phone. But Tyrion’s is. She calls him, and he picks up after three rings. “Tyrion speaking.”

“Hi, this is Brienne, Jaime’s best friend. Has he been home recently?”

“No…?” Tyrion asks. “He moved in with you. I haven’t seen him around.”

“Alright, thank you.”

She’s about to hang up when Tyrion says, “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not.” Then she hangs up.

He’s not here. He’s not home. He has enough Xanax to knock him out, but with alcohol, probably enough to kill him. And he’s driving. Christ, she thinks, running a hand through her hair. “Fucking hell.”

She grabs her keys, puts on her shoes, and runs out the door. The first place she checks is the movie theater. She drives down each aisle in the parking lot looking for his car. She gets out and asks the ticket taker if he’s seen a handsome blonde man who is probably very drunk. He has not.

She drives past the Lannister residence to make sure Tyrion wasn’t lying. Jaime’s car isn’t in the driveway. It could be in the garage, but he doesn’t usually park it there. She pulls over and lets her head fall on the steering wheel. In the distance, she can hear the the static noise of a huge crowd cheering. A football game, probably. The school year just started. It must be the first game of the season.

She opens her eyes. That’s it, she thinks. Then she floors the gas toward the high school.

It’s easier than she expected to find his car. He’s parked in the back, where the cafeteria takes food deliveries and where Brienne used to smoke with Renly and Loras during study hall. She parks, climbs out of her car, and calls out his name. No answer. She can hear the marching band in the distance playing “Hang On Sloopy.” She cups her hands over her eyes and peers into his driver's side window. What looks like all twelve beer cans are strewn around the car.

The only light is coming from the football field to her left and a street lamp to her right. It’s just turned September but the air is chill and she wishes she had brought a jacket. The streetlight illuminates the playground that separates the high school from the daycare next door, the same park where Oberyn wanted to meet her for homecoming. The bench right beside it was where she would have sat, waiting for him—

Where the form of a man is currently curled up on his side. Brienne sprints over and drops to her knees in front of the bench. Jaime’s eyes are closed. She shakes his shoulder. “Jaime. Jaime, wake up.”

He doesn’t respond. She lifts one of his eyelids and finds his eye rolled into the back of his head. She checks his pulse—it seems slow, she thinks. Or fast? But it’s going, and that’s what matters. She hooks an arm under his knees and one under his shoulders and picks him up to run back to her car. He’s just as heavy as he looks. All the terrible things he said about her size, and now it’s the thing saving his life.

* * *

Brienne keeps looking over her shoulder whenever the doors of the ER slide open. She expects to see Cersei, or Tyrion maybe, if the hospital has called them for some reason. They shouldn’t need to, she thinks; she gave them all the information they asked for: Jaime’s allergies, medications, medical history. Height, weight (which she is now well aware of), and god, she even knows where he keeps his insurance card. They rushed him in and she watched as they carted him through the doors.

It takes almost two hours before the little buzzer in her hand goes off. She goes up to the front desk to trade it for a badge with his room number on it, and weaves through the labyrinth of hallways to find it. A curtain is closed around his bed, and she pushes it to the side before stepping in and letting it fall back to its original position. Jaime’s eyes are closed and there’s various tubing hooking him up to machines. She wonders what they had to do to him, how much pain he’s in.

“Jaime,” she says, and touches his hand gently.

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he turns his palm upward and takes her hand. They stay silent for a long moment, until Jaime says, words slightly slurred, “Wasn’t trying to kill myself. Just…wanted to calm down a bit.”

“You calmed down too far.”

He makes a sound in his throat that could be a laugh. They fall into another tense silence. Brienne doesn’t know if she should sit or stand over him, what she should ask, how she should be feeling.

“Thank you,” he says finally. “You’re always saving me.”

“You always need saving.”

He turns his head away, covers his eyes with his other hand. His lower lip starts to tremble and he takes a sharp inhale of breath. His voice wavers, cracks: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says, even though it’s not.

“I’m sorry I always need saving. I’m sorry about all the horrible things I said. I’m sorry I bribed Oberyn to ask you to homecoming. I’m sorry for fucking Sansa in your house. I’m sorry for getting jealous of Tormund. I’m sorry for stealing your Xanax. I’m sorry I’m too much of a coward to stand up to Cersei. I’m sorry I’ve spent most of my life wishing I could be with you and not doing anything about it. I’m sorry I always do things that I need to apologize for. I’m sorry I’m such a drunken fucking mess.” He sucks in a shuddering breath. “You deserve better than me. You’ve always deserved better.”

She takes a seat at the edge of the bed and holds his hand tighter. She feels deflated, like she’s run out of anger, and all that remains is relief that he’s safe and alive. And there’s hope inside her too, hope that maybe things will change now that everything is out in the open. She feels naive to be optimistic after everything that’s happened, and part of her believes he will never change, will never get better, will continue making himself the whirling chaotic center of her life until the day she dies.

But part of her, the darkest part, thinks maybe that wouldn’t be too bad.

“Do you remember talking to me in high school?” Jaime asks. There are still tears in his eyes. He still can’t meet her gaze.

“No, I didn’t think we ever spoke.”

“We did. A couple times. Once, you turned around and picked up my calculator and typed ‘boobies’ on it and put it back on my desk without saying a word. It was a graphing calculator though, and you typed it out in actual letters instead of numbers. It was the stupidest, cutest thing anyone had ever done to me. And a couple weeks later, you caught a glance at my test grade. I’d gotten a low D, and at the end of class, you were packing up and asked me if I wanted any help. You said you had Tuesday afternoons free, we could go to the library, no big deal. I got so angry at that, so offended that I could spend so much time hating you, and you just wanted to help me and make me laugh. There were a few more times, too, and I hung onto those memories for years, deconstructing them and rebuilding them, sometimes convincing myself you were as secretly in love with me as I was with you. It just made me hate myself more, that I was incapable of reaching out to you the way I wanted to.”

“I didn’t know,” Brienne says. “I had no idea.”

“No one did. Except Cersei, who, even if she didn’t know how I really felt about you, still hated how much attention I gave you over her.” He finally looks at her, eyes cloudy but sincere. Tears are falling over the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want you to forgive me. Not until I’ve earned it. But—do you believe me?”

“I don’t know yet. I have a lot to process.”

“I think…” Jaime begins. He clutches the blankets in his fist with his free hand and looks away. “I think we need to spend some time apart. They’re giving me a referral to rehab. Ten weeks this time. And when I get out, I want to be better. I want to be good for you. I want to earn back your trust. I’ll get a job and an apartment and I’ll cut Cersei out completely. And only then do I want you to consider...us. Maybe. If that’s something you would want.”

“It is,” Brienne admits. “It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time.”

She picks his hand up and kisses his palm, presses it against her cheek and holds it there.

“I’ll miss you,” he says.

“I’ll miss you too.”

* * *

The first week without Jaime is...refreshing, sort of. Like a cleanse. It’s difficult and it hurts but she knows it’s for the best, because he’s getting the help he needs and she’s relaxing and trying her damnedest not to think about him.

Which she fails. Miserably.

She checks her phone impulsively to see if he’s texted, which of course he hasn’t because he’s not allowed to have his phone in rehab. After a few days she strikes up a conversation with Renly, which leads to an invitation to dinner since he's in town. He comes over for a while and they drink wine and catch up, and how has Loras been doing? He’s in LA now, of course, working as a side character on some obscure show no one’s ever heard of. We keep in touch, Renly says, a little tipsily wistful, and then asks how Jaime is doing.

Oh, you know, Brienne offers. And then tumbles into the whole story because she can’t hold it in any longer, all of it, starting from falling asleep together last month and subsequently forgetting about it, to Jaime moving in with her, then Sansa, Tormund, the job interview, Cersei, the notes, and did he know Oberyn was bribed to ask her to homecoming?

 _No_ , he absolutely didn’t, but go on.

Then the love confession, and the hospital, and now, well, Jaime is in rehab.

Renly pulls in a deep breath after he’s heard the whole thing, then takes a long pull from his wine glass, which empties it. He reaches for the bottle and pours another. “So. Highest priority. Do you love him?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe he loves you?”

“Yes,” she says without hesitation, but maybe it’s the alcohol that lends more credence to the idea than it deserves.

“He’s apologized. Do you want to forgive him?”

“I do. But I want to wait and see if it sticks.”

“The sobriety?”

“No, that’s a battle he’s going to be fighting for a long time. I mean...the openness, I guess. The willingness to introspect and accept his circumstances and change. I want to see if he can hold a job, stay away from Cersei, support himself. I have faith in him. I really do.”

Renly pats her knee and squeezes it lightly. “It sounds like someone needs to.”

And so she’s fine. She’s fine for eight whole days.

But then the letters come. The first arrives on a Monday, and she plucks it out of her mailbox when she gets home from her workout. Jaime’s scrawl takes up the whole envelope, and there’s no return address. She doesn’t even bother going inside before she rips it open and reads it.

_Brienne,_

_I love you._

_That’s really all I was writing to say, but I have a whole page to fill up now. You don’t have to reply to this, in fact I’d prefer if you didn’t. I'm not even going to put a return address on it. It would just give me time to fixate, to use you as a distraction from recovery. And I don’t want to put that pressure on you. Not anymore._

_I hate not having my phone. I overhear something stupid and I want to text it to you. The sun falls through the window and lands on the laminate tile in just the right way and I want to take a picture for you. The alcohol withdrawal is bad, but the contact withdrawal is worse. I didn’t realize how many thoughts I filtered to you in a day. Now they’re all stuffed in my head with nowhere to go. I have imaginary conversations with you, like I used to in high school. I was constantly daydreaming getting up the courage to talk to you, the things I might say that would make you want to keep talking to me. But I never did. Because I was scared. Scared of Cersei. Scared of your inevitable rejection. Scared of my feelings for you._

_It shouldn’t have taken as long as it did for us to get to this point, for me to be honest with you. I was so used to women falling all over me—explicit, demanding—that when I expected you to be the same and you showed me nothing but kindness and acceptance, I took that alone as a rejection. You didn’t want anything from me and therefore I was useless to you. I didn’t believe you could ever feel the same about me. You: strong, successful, balanced, healthy. Me: drunk, depressed, weak, a failure._

_And so I told myself being your best friend was good enough, that if you didn’t want me any other way, I could at least show you how much I adore you._

_It doesn’t matter if you never love me the way that I love you. My adoration will still exist on its own. It will not wither from inattention; it is not conditional on your acceptance. I will love you and continue to love you until you tell me to stop, and then I’ll just have to love you in secret._

_But when I come home, when I’m better, I’d like to_ ~~_marry you_~~

~~_make love to you_ ~~

~~_wake up beside you_ ~~

~~_fall asleep next to you_ ~~

~~_kiss you_ ~~

_take you on a date._

_A proper date. The one we should have had four years ago. The one we should have had in high school. We can go to a movie, just like the first time, but this time I’ll buy our tickets, and halfway through, hold your hand. And our palms will get clammy and uncomfortable after awhile but we’ll keep doing it anyway. Then I’ll take you home and walk to you to your door, and you’ll ask me inside for a drink, and I’ll tell you no thank you, I don’t drink anymore. And you’ll say, coffee then. I’ll still decline. Let’s take it slow, I’ll say. We can wait. See how things go. Get to know each other better._

_And just when you think I’m about to leave, I’ll stop and kiss you. The kind of kiss you’ve deserved your whole life. Then, when you’re smiling and rolling your eyes and calling me an idiot, I’ll tell you I love you. It’ll be the thousandth time I’ve said it but feel like the first, because this time you’ll know exactly how I mean it._

_66 days left._

_—J_

Brienne doesn’t know whether to frame it or burn it, so she sits on her front step and reads it again.

The letters come almost daily after that, with two on Mondays. Jaime talks about his boredom in rehab during the other ten hours a day he isn’t sleeping or in group. He apologizes, again and again, each new letter an admission of some other revelatory insight he gained in therapy. He tells her how beautiful he thinks she is. He admits that he misses Cersei, but not in the way he expected; he's ready to detach from her. He makes lists of the mistakes he’s made that he’ll never do again. He makes lists of the things he intends to do in the future (here they get...graphic, and Brienne gets so flustered she has to set the letter down for a second before she reads on, but once she does, these are the passages she reads over and over, commits to memory, thinks about when she falls asleep at night, all the things he wants to do to her, all the things she’ll let him do). He has paragraphs upon paragraphs of the most boring observations, the kind he normally sends her in text messages throughout the day so they seem innocuous, but all piled up in letter format they get tedious to wade through. He can’t seem to keep anything in his head. Every thought has to be poured into words.

She writes him letters in return, but can't send them. They’re too cruel; they bring her to tears. But then she lights a corner on fire over the sink and watches all of her anger vanish. And then she feels better. She tries to write love letters, too, but the words don’t come. _I cannot woo in festival terms,_ she thinks, a line from a play she managed in high school. When he gets out of rehab, she’ll just have to learn to express her affection in other ways, more than just replying to his texts and keeping her home open to him.

A little over a month into his treatment, Brienne gets a phone call from a number she doesn’t recognize. She picks up, and before she can say hello, Jaime says, “I told myself I wouldn’t call you.”

“But you did.”

“But I did.”

“Why? Is everything alright?”

“Yes. Well, no. I’m in rehab. But for being in rehab, I’m fine.”

“Then why did you call?”

“Nearly two dozen letters and you’re still this fucking oblivious.”

“What letters?”

“Don’t even pretend.” She can hear the smile in his voice, even if it's threaded with sadness. “God, I miss you. How have you been? How are you coping without me?”

“Very well actually. For one, Tormund proposed.”

“Shut up.”

“It was very romantic. He didn’t have a ring so he gave me a forty-five pound weight plate instead.”

“Damn, he’s good.”

“His crossfit instructor is getting ordained. We’re going to do weighted lunges all the way down the aisle. Our first dance will be to ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ And instead of a wedding registry, we’re accepting homebrew kegs.”

“Okay, okay. But really, are you still seeing him?”

“Of course not. I haven’t heard from him since our date. It’s a power play when men don’t text you after, you know. So you have to wait them out and see if they’re just fucking with you.”

“I hate to sound arrogant, but I’m not sure that’ll be relevant information for either of us for the foreseeable future.”

She feels a flush crawl up her face. “That does sound arrogant. How do you know I—”

“Because you love me.”

“I do? I had no idea. Thank you for letting me know.”

“And I love you.” His voice trails off like he moved away from the receiver, and when he comes back, he says quietly, “And when I get out of here, I’m going to spend at minimum three hours putting my mouth on every part of your body.”

“Jaime…” Brienne begins. Her heart skips and her face is on fire.

“I have fourteen years to make up for. That’s half our lives. Half our lives we could have been having amazing sex. How many times a day do you think we would have done it? Twice, on average? Morning and night, let’s say. So that’s, what, two times a day for fourteen years…”

“Ten thousand, two hundred and twenty.”

“Okay, so we won’t rest until we’ve had sex ten thousand times. That’ll take, say, a year or two. We’ll stock up on bulk supplies of condoms, lube, and Gatorade. Unrelated, what are your thoughts on riding crops?”

“Jaime!”

“What? Too far?”

“No, I’m just…” She takes a deep breath. Her fingers are digging into her legs. “I’m getting flustered.”

Jaime lets out a pitiful groan. “I want to see you flustered. I want to feel your pulse between my teeth, your scratch marks down my back. I want to—”

A bell goes off in the background.

Jaime takes what sounds like a steadying breath. “Time is up. I have to go.”

“Alright,” Brienne says, but the word feels weak, probably because she wants to crawl through the phone line and tackle him to the ground.

“I’ll try not to call again, but no guarantees.”

They say their goodbyes, and Jaime sounds like he’s about to rattle off a compulsive I-love-you, but thinks better of it and hangs up.

Another month left.

* * *

Has she even forgiven him? Has she? Has it been long enough, has he proven himself worth forgiveness, is she only setting herself up for disappointment?

He was released yesterday afternoon, and she nearly cried in relief seeing his name pop up on her phone when he got it back. The first text read, _FUCKING FINALLY_ with about two dozen celebratory emojis following it.

Tyrion’s personal assistant Bronn had picked him up from the rehab center, even though Brienne would have, but she took it as a good sign he was trying to be more self-reliant and less dependent on her. They texted nonstop all last night, until she fell asleep, just like old times, and they agreed he could come over this evening for dinner and to talk.

Now it’s about ten-till he’s supposed to arrive, and she’s pacing her living room, thinking about what an awful idea this is, she should cut him out completely, he’s done too much damage. Of course those thoughts are immediately followed by how much she does truly love him, and how she doesn’t want anyone else, and that she really wants to see if he’s changed and grown and will stay away from Cersei. Curiosity again. It’ll kill her.

And she had no idea what to wear, either. He told her she looked awful when she got dressed up, but a hoodie and track pants seemed too casual, so she ended up with jeans and a t-shirt and combing her hair so that it’s mildly presentable.

She also shaved her legs. Because of reasons.

At three-till, he rings the doorbell. For a second she gets irritated that someone would arrive right when Jaime is supposed to, until she realizes it’s Jaime not barging right in like he’s always done.

She opens the door and there he is, all six-odd feet of him, freshly shaven, recent haircut, skin-tight flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. He’s carrying a dozen roses in one arm and a bag of takeout in the other. He looks like he did when they first started hanging out four years ago, the last time he got out of rehab, more or less like a very handsome brick wall that could bench press a bus.

“I take it you utilized the gym in rehab,” she says. At this point she’d be willing to fuck him on her front porch. She can feel her libido vibrating under her skin.

“Work out, write letters, cry a lot. There’s not much else to do.” There’s heat in his gaze, tension, nervousness, gripping the flowers and food a little too tightly, like he’s restraining himself.

She steps aside. “Would you like to come in?”

“I would.” He hands her the roses as he enters. “These are for you.”

“Thank you, they’re lovely.” It's awkward like the first time they hung out. Surely not _that_ much as changed. She sets the flowers on the foyer table and he puts the food on the coffee table and now they’re standing and facing each other with absolutely nothing in their way. She wants to say something, maybe that she forgives him, or that she’ll go get some plates so they can eat and talk and set boundaries and expectations going forward.

But then he takes a step closer to her, and she takes a small step closer to him, and that’s it. Suddenly her fists are gripping his shirt and his hands are in her hair and they’re kissing. Kissing like she’s never kissed anyone, like she’s never been kissed, exactly like the letter said it would be. He pushes her (or does she drag him?) against the wall by the stairs, and she lifts her leg up to his hip and he trails his teeth down her throat. He bites at her neck and grips her thigh until it hurts, trails his other hand up her shirt while she tries to catch her breath and fails.

Christ, she could come like this, she thinks. His cock is pressing against the seam of her jeans and digging into the exact right spot; she can feel her soaking herself, and it takes every ounce of willpower not to tear his shirt off of him and push her pants down so he can take her right here, without so much as a _how have you been_ spoken between them while their dinner gets cold a few feet away.

“Jaime,” she says, and god, she hates the reedy sound of her voice, that he could do this to her in just a matter of minutes.

He barely responds with a _hmm?_ that sounds more like a growl, and he bites down on the juncture between her shoulder and neck. His hand has made its way to the top of her ribs so that it’s not quite cupping her breast.

“Jaime, we said we’d have dinner first, remember? We said we needed to talk.”

“Ten _thousand_ ,” he mutters against her throat, near her ear so that it sends a shiver down her back.

“We’ve waited fourteen years. We can wait another hour.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Jaime,” she says, more tersely.

He lets out a sigh that sounds more like a groan, and rests his head against her shoulder. “Fine,” he says, and takes a step back. “We’ll have dinner.”

She tries to skirt around him so she can get some plates, but he catches her hip and manages to kiss her once more before letting her go again.

It’s only when they’re finally sitting on the couch with a plate of Chinese food in front of each of them (and water to drink, no beer or wine), that Jaime says, “So.”

“So.”

“Things are different now.”

“They are.”

“And I guess we should be talking about that.”

“I guess we should.”

“I feel like I’ve said enough over the past ten weeks, so I think it might be your turn.”

“Alright,” she says, and wipes her mouth on a napkin. She takes a breath and says, “I forgive you. For all of it. And it might be stupid of me but I’m choosing to have faith in you and your recovery.”

His smile is a slow one, and doesn’t turn into the maniacal grin as usual, but something far sweeter and more sincere. “You’re the only one who does.”

“And I agree, I think you should get a job and your own apartment, but when your lease is up, if things are still going well between us, we can talk about moving in together. And after that—”

“We can get married.”

She gives him a look. “I don’t know about that.”

“What about the honeymoon? Aruba? The Maldives? Something tropical. Oh, or the mountains. Do you like skiing?”

She opens her mouth to answer, but he continues. “And babies. How many? I was thinking four because three was a terrible number. Did you know my father already has college funds set aside for our future children? They’ll be set for life by the time we actually have them.”

“Oh my god.”

“Should we get a bigger house? We should get a bigger house. Oh, and a vacation home where we could summer.”

“You’re being needy again.”

“You like it when I’m needy.”

“Shut up,” she says, but she does.

* * *

They decide not to have sex that night. Instead they stay up until all hours just talking, like they used to. When Jaime leaves, he presses her against the doorframe and kisses her slowly while the sun rises and their bodies keep each other warm in the late autumn chill, a hazy fog drifting around their ankles.

Later that day, he finds an apartment a couple miles from Brienne’s house and signs a lease so he doesn’t have to sleep at his old place. After work, Brienne brings him an air mattress and the TV that’s still in the guest room and a pizza, and they fall asleep on the air mattress fully clothed, curled together. Jaime kisses her whenever his mouth is near, whatever part of her is closest to him. He even does it in his sleep. They’re too tired for anything tonight, but tomorrow, he promises. Tomorrow will be the night.

And it is. It’s the movie date they should have had four years ago. Jaime picks her up and takes her to dinner (a midscale Italian place), then they walk next door to the movie theater where Brienne buys the tickets for a romantic comedy neither of them really wants to see, but it doesn’t matter because the theater is empty except for a handful of people, and they take a seat in the very back and start making out before the movie even begins.

She opted for a skirt that evening, even though Jaime made a disparaging remark about it (“What, no track pants?”), she shut him up by looking him dead in the eye and saying, “Easy access,” to which he actually, honest-to-god blushed. Always one to dish it out, never one to take it.

So by the time the movie starts, Jaime’s hand is sliding up the inside of her thigh, teasingly slow, and he lets out a surprised moan when he feels she’s not wearing any underwear. He slips a finger into her and pulls it out to roll against her clit, and she clutches his arm and kisses him, tries not to make any noise but she’s always been terrible about that. Thankfully it’s one of those theaters where they can lift up the armrest, and by the end of the first act, they’re nearly on top of each other. Her hand is down his pants, stroking him—good god, she’s been missing out—and it really does feel like high school all over again. Well, high school for the kind of people who fooled around in the back of movie theaters, which happened to be people other than Jaime and Brienne.

Brienne comes on a choked gasp, head thrown back against the seat, Jaime grinning against her throat. She’s just about to reciprocate when he whispers, “Why don’t we just leave?”

“But the movie’s not over,” she whispers back. The elderly couple two rows in front of them turn to glare.

“C’mon.” He takes her by the hand and stands, and she pulls her skirt back down, and for the first time since she’s known him, he remembers to pick up the goddamn popcorn bucket.

“I’m so proud of you,” she says.

“Bite me,” he replies, and dumps it in the trash can outside the theater.

“I’d rather fuck you.”

They nearly run out to the parking lot that separates the Italian restaurant from the theater, and when they get to Jaime’s car, he presses her against the door and kisses her again, runs his hands up her back and bites her lower lip.

“We have to at least get in the car,” she says, so he reaches around her and opens the door, then bends down and pushes the seat all the way back.

He gestures inside and says, “After you.” His hair is all fucked up and she’s done a number on his lips, and his erection is straining his jeans. She’s never seen anything hotter in her entire goddamn life.

So she gets in, and he gets in after her, not gracefully, given that they’re both over six foot and this is a convertible, for godsake. He settles between her legs in the footwell, and she reaches out to shut the door. By the time it closes, Jaime has her skirt wrenched up her thighs, and yanks her hips closer to him, and buries his face in her cunt.

“I thought we were going to fuck,” she says, but her breath is already growing rapid. She doesn’t think she’s had sex anywhere other than a bed.

He lifts off of her for long enough to say, “Been wanting to do this too long.”

So he laps at her, and nibbles her clit, and adjusts the pace and rhythm according to her breathing and moaning. Within just a handful of minutes she’s gripping the seatbelt with one hand, his hair in the other, shuddering all over and trying not to cry out too loudly. They’ve been lucky to have the back of the parking lot to themselves, being a Tuesday night.

“That’s two,” he says, his cheek resting against her thigh, breathing heavy. “Nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-eight to go.” Then he dives back in, and she has to grip his hair and say, “Just fuck me already, Lannister.”

“I like it when you’re bossy,” he replies, climbing out of the footwell and on top of her, one hand holding himself up by the seat, the other unbuttoning his jeans. She helps him with it, pushes them down to his hips and strokes him a couple times to full hardness. One of her feet is against the steering wheel, the other the passenger-side vent, and when the head of his cock breaches her entrance she nearly screams in relief.

Surprising absolutely no one, Jaime doesn’t shut up while he’s fucking her, a litany of curses and praises and her name, over and over. The windows cloud up and the car grows stiflingly hot. The leather of the seats sticks to Brienne’s lower back and her thighs; she can feel the heat of Jaime’s skin under her hands, whatever parts she can reach, claw, grip. Moans she can’t bite back escape her, and at this point she doesn’t fucking care who can see or hear them, she’s never felt this satisfied in her life, never so sure to offer her heart to another person, never this in love.

Jaime finally shuts up and she takes that as a sign he’s close, rhythm broken, thrusts shallowing, until finally he stills and lets out a long breath and she can feel him spilling inside of her.

He catches his breath and pulls out. After a handful of seconds, he asks, “Think that’s baby number one?”

“You’re the _worst_ ,” she says, kicking him off of her, which leads to a scuffle, which leads to laughter, which leads to more kissing, even though the position they’re in is dreadfully uncomfortable and they’re both way too old for it and will definitely be feeling it tomorrow.

(She’s been on birth control since she was nineteen. He knows this. He’s just a dick.)

Jaime buttons himself up and climbs into the driver’s side seat. He turns the engine as he says, “I was thinking a May wedding.”

“You haven’t even proposed yet.”

He puts the car into drive and pulls out of the parking spot. “I didn’t think I had to. Will you marry me?”

“No,” she says, but takes his hand when he reaches out to hold hers.

It’s not the date he laid out in his first letter. It’s not the date they would have had in high school. It’s not the friend date they had a decade later. But it’s the date she’s always wanted, and knows there will be many more to come.

“Fine,” he says, turning onto the main road toward her house. “I’ll ask again tomorrow.”

* * *

  **A year and some later**

Brienne is halfway through her second favorite comfort movie, _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ , when her front door squeaks open, followed by a _thunk_ , a pause, another _thunk_ , and the door closes again. After a few minutes, the door opens again and there’s another _thunk._

“Do you need any help?” she asks.

“No, no, of course not, my lady. I’ll get it all myself,” Jaime says, and the door closes.

A few minutes later it opens again, another _thunk_ , and closes, but this time footsteps follow and suddenly Jaime is looming over her, dripping from the rain.

“You’re really not going to help,” he says.

She points to her stomach. “Doctor’s orders.”

“It’s only been two months.”

“Ice cream and movie marathons from here on out. Nine month vacation. Boom.”

He crawls on the couch and settles between her legs, his head resting on her belly.

“Get off. You’re getting me all wet,” she says.

He ignores her. “Still can’t hear anything.”

“It’s just a clump of cells.”

“ _She_ is a clump of cells. With a lot of promise.” He lifts his head and yells at her stomach, “AND YOU'RE DOING A GREAT JOB.”

Their relationship had moved glacially slow for so long, and now it feels like it’s on fast-forward. Jaime has been moving his things in a few boxes at a time over the span of months, even though he’s been more or less living with her the entire year. Brienne went off birth control shortly after the wedding, which was a morning courthouse affair with only a handful of people followed by brunch. They didn’t go anywhere for a honeymoon, but stayed in bed together for a whole week making their way to ten thousand.

Jaime, to Brienne’s knowledge, hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since rehab. The only times he’s seen or spoken to Cersei were during occasions where he had to. He didn’t even invite her to the wedding, but she’s toned down since she started dating a guy named Robert, and Brienne thinks that by the time the baby is born, maybe they’d be willing to begin the steps to make amends. Jaime ended up getting the job he interviewed for before he went to rehab, working for a contractor named Varys who does so many things that Jaime can’t get bored.

Even married, Brienne and Jaime bicker sometimes but never fight. They go to the movies every week. They cook dinner together and fall asleep together and wake up together. Brienne, unprompted, tells him she loves him every day, and every time she says it, his face lights up in surprise and he kisses her. She does nice things for him. She buys him gifts. She texts him good morning on the rare occasion he doesn’t sleep over.

“You don’t have to yell,” she says.

He presses his ear back against her belly and closes his eyes. “How else will she hear me?”

“She just knows. You don’t have to tell her.”

He lifts his head and glares at her. “I did the same thing with you and look how that turned out. She’s genetically predisposed to your obliviousness.”

“ _My_ obliviousness?”

“Yes, yours. If you had just said, ‘O, Jaime, my sweet Jaime, I am so very in love with you, obviously and truly,’ from day one, we could have, like, six kids by now.”

“We are not having six kids. We need to see how we do with the one. If she’s anything like you, I won’t be able to handle more than that.”

“If she’s anything like me, the world will be a better place and you should thank me.”

“You’re obnoxious.”

He kisses her stomach. “Charming.”

“Ridiculous.”

He crawls up her body and kisses her chest. “Whimsical.”

“A terrible human being.”

He crawls up higher and kisses her collarbone. “A really great human being.”

“My worst nightmare.”

Then he kisses her on the lips. “A dream come true.”

She brackets her thighs around his hips and drags him closer, kisses him properly, lets the heat of it spread through them slowly as he kisses back down her neck. “My husband.”

"Well," he mutters against her throat. “Nobody’s perfect.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so here are the things I Am Sorry for:  
> 1\. Everything is grossly Americanized for no other reason than I am a gross American and can't write anything else.  
> 2\. Minimal regard for canon whoops :''''(  
> 3\. Everyone is OOC as hell, but. Hey, AU. 
> 
> There are probably more but the point is GoT purists should probably steer clear of this fic.


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